Tag: Miles Davis

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Dream Syndicate’s Lysergic Ode to Getting Older and Miles Davis

Currently comprised of founding members Steve Wynn, an accomplished and critically applauded singer/songwriter, guitarist and solo artist and drummer Dennis Duck, along with bassist Mark Walton and guitarist Jason Victor, the Los Angeles-based psych rock act The Dream Syndicate can trace its origins back to the early 80s when Wynn along with fellow founding member Kendra Smith and future True West members Russ Tolman and Gavin Blair founded and played in one of the area’s first new wave bands in the Davis, CA music scene, The Suspects. Wynn also recorded a single with another band, 15 Minutes, which included members of Alternate Learning.

After returning to his hometown, Wynn spent a brief stint of time rehearsing in another local band, Goat Deity with future Wednesday Week members, Kelly and Kristi Callan — and while with Goat Deity, Wynn met Karl Precoda, who had an answered an ad seeking a bassist. The two started a new band with Precoda switching to guitar. Wynn’s college pal and former bandmate Smith and Duck (Mehaffey), who was a member of Pasadena-based act Human Hands joining the band to complete The Dream Syndicate’s initial lineup. (Interestingly, as the story goes, Duck suggested the band’s name as a reference to Tony Conrad’s early 1960s New York-based experimental ensemble, best known as the Theatre of Eternal Music, which featured John Cale.)

With the release of their Paul B. Cutler-produced debut EP, The Dream Syndicate received attention locally for a sound influenced by The Velvet Underground, Neil Young and Television, completely with aggressively long, feedback-filled improvisations. The members of the band signed to Slash Records subsidiary Ruby Records, who released the band’s 1982 full-length debut, the attention-grabbing and influential Days of Wine and Roses. Rough Trade Records released their debut’s lead single “Tell Me When It’s Over” as the A-side of a UK EP, which included a live cover of Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul” that was released in early 1983. Smith left the band and joined David Roback in Opal — and she was replaced by David Provost.

Their Sandy Pearlman-produced sophomore effort Medicine Show was recorded and released through A&M Records in 1984 — and as a result of being on a major label, the band opened for R.E.M. and U2. Attempting to build on a growing profile, the members of the band released a five song EP This Is Not The New Dream Syndicate Album . . . Live!, which was noteworthy as it was the last recorded effort to feature Precoda, who left soon after to pursue a career in screenwriting — and it was the first to feature Mark Walton on bass. The EP’s commercial failure led to the band’s first breakup — although a temporary one. The band was then dropped by A&M Records after the label rejected the band’s demo for “Slide Away.”

During the band’s break up, Wynn along with Green on Red’s Dan Stuart wrote and recorded 10 songs with Duck and a number of other musicians, which was released by A&M Records in 1985 as Danny and Dusty’s The Lost Weekend. After the release of Lost Weekend, Wynn, Duck and Walton teamed up with Paul B. Cutler to form a then-newly reunited iteration of The Dream Syndicate that recorded two full-length studio albums — 1986’s Cutler-produced Out of the Grey and 1988’s Elliot Mazer-produced Ghost Stories. The band recorded a live album Live at Raji‘s which was recorded in 1988 before the release of Ghost Stories but released afterward.

The band broke up in 1989 — and a batch of previously unreleased material was released that included 3½ (The Lost Tapes: 1985-1988), a compilation of studio sessions and The Day Before Wine and Roses, a live KPFK radio session, recorded just before the release of the band’s applauded debut album were released.  After the breakup, Walton went on to play bass in the Continental Drifters while Wynn went on to become an acclaimed singer/songwriter and solo artist with a reputation or restlessly exploring a variety of different styles — and leading a number of different projects including Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3, The Baseball Project and others.

Wynn led a reunited Dream Syndicate to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their full-length debut that featured Walton, Duck and Jason Victor, Wynn’s longtime Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3 guitarist at a festival appearance at 2012’s Festival BAM in Barcelona Spain. The reunited band went on to play a handful of other live sets, including two 2013 Paisley Underground reunion shows that included The Bangles, The Three O’Clock and Rain Parade. September 2014 saw the band playing a handful of shows in which they played their first two albums in their complete entirety — and those shows marked the band’s first shows in the Southeast in almost 30 years.  Between their first reunion show and 2017, the band played more than 50 shows.

Anti-Records released the band’s fifth full-length album How Did I Find Myself Here in 2017. The album which featured a lineup of Wynn, Walton, Duck and Victor with keyboardist Chris Cacavas was recorded at Montrose Studios — and notably the album’s final track “Kendra’s Dream” featured vocals and lyrics from Kendra Smith.  Building upon the growing attention around the reunited band, the members of The Dream Syndicate recorded three songs, which were included on the compilation 3 x 4, a collection of tracks that featured new material from their Paisley Underground counterparts, The Bangles, The Three O’Clock and Rain Parade with each of the four bands covering songs by the other bands.

Slated for a May 3, 2019 release through Anti-Records, the John Agnello and The Dream Syndicate co-produced These Times will be the second full-length studio album since the band reunited, and the album’s material is reportedly a subtle yet noticeable departure for the band sonically. “When I was writing the songs for the new album I was pretty obsessed with Donuts by J-Dilla,” lead singer and songwriter Steve Wynn explained. “I loved the way that he approached record making as a DJ, a crate-digger, a music fan wanting to lay out all of his favorite music, twist and turn the results until he made them into his own. I was messing around with step sequencers, drum machines, loops—anything to take me out of my usual way of writing and try to feel as though I was working on a compilation rather than ‘more of the same.’ You might not automatically put The Dream Syndicate and J-Dilla in the same sentence, but I hear that album when I hear our new one.” Additionally, Wynn also changed up his lyric writing process for the album — instead of the song’s sound being dictated by previously written lyrics, he wrote all the material’s lyrics after the band finished instrumental tracking, so that the lyrics were influenced by the sounds.

The album’s first single was the atmospheric and surrealist dream, “Black Light,” a track built around a looped arpeggiated key and congo sequence, shimmering bursts of guitar, and a motorik groove comprised of a propulsive and sinuous bass line and a backing vocal section that sings “aaah” while Wynn’s vocals sing surrealistic and symbolic lyrics about how the night exposes our darkest and deepest inhibitions and fears.  These Times’ second and latest single “Put Some Miles On” continues a on a somewhat similar vein as its immediate predecessor as it’s centered around a chugging, motorik groove, blasts of feedback driven guitar, twinkling synths and Wynn’s languid, speak-singing vocals singing surrealist lyrics with a profound double meaning — after all, the song and its title refers to getting older while on the road and actually playing the work of Miles Davis. 

“This is our third video directed by David Dalglish, a Scotsman who is gradually becoming the official visual interpreter of our music,” the band’s Steve Wynn explains in press notes. “And I love the way he captured the triple meaning of “Put Some Miles On”—actual road miles logged, the ensuing experience and wisdom of the turning of the calendar pages and, of course, our love of Miles Davis himself. It’s truly a zig zag marathon!”

Throwback by William Ruben Helms

THROWBACK: John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” — Or Some Thoughts on Jazz, My Father and The Events of 9/11

John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme has been an annual tradition since this site’s inception, and while it may arguably be among one of the most beautiful album s ever written and recorded, it’s also an album that has a deeply personal meaning to me; in fact, the tradition goes back to about roughly 2005. On that particular September 11th, I had come  home from a job at a small Midtown Manhattan-based publisher to my father cooking and playing A Love Supreme on the living room stereo loudly — so loudly that it almost felt and sounded as though the musicians were playing right in our living room. My father wasn’t exactly the most thoughtful or even mindful person but in light of such terrifying and awful events, it seemed to be one of the most thoughtful things he’s done in many years; after all, the album is not just a reminder of the profound beauty we are sometimes capable of, as well an album that humbly contemplates the nature of God and of God’s love. And it made quite a bit of sense. 

Now, as you know, this post is an annual tradition here and as you may recall, my father was a complicated and conflicting figure in my life. He was a terrible drunk and died at the age of 57. Throughout his life, he was in many was, he was three or four different people at various points in my life, and I’ll never be able to completely reconcile all of them. Years ago, I learned to just accept it as it is. And while he may have been a unknowable and sometimes terrible person, who I frequently hated and had no respect for, he was my father — and unlike some of the people I grew up, I knew him and he was around, even if he was sort of absent. But he taught me how to did teach me how to wear a suit and how to tie a tie; how to catch a baseball and how to throw it; how to read a point spread; raised me as a Yankee fan; and he was a huge jazz fan — particularly, the bop era. One of the rare positive things I can remember is my father playing old Horace Silver, Oliver  Nelson, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and a long list of others. Dad loved Coltrane the most, and in my house, he was something akin to a god. In some way small way, those old albums are one of the only ways I can truly connect to him in a way that makes sense. 

As a native New Yorker, September 11th has a much different meaning and feel than most other Americans. Back then, I was finishing my last semester at NYU, and I can still remember coming across the missing posters posted all across town. At the West 4th Street A,B,C,D,E,F, and M station — the M train didn’t stop there at the time; but it does now — the victim’s families posted missing posters from ceiling to floor, going end to end, east to west, across Sixth Avenue. With each of those posters, the family tried to capture their loved one  in the fullness of their lives, smiling in that awkward and self-conscious fashion that we all do in extremely posed pictures or doing something that they loved. “My friend such and such was last seen on the 103rd floor . . . ,” several would read, and they were pleading for any information they could get on their loved one.  But somehow you just knew that most of those people would never be found again; that they’d never be returning home ever again; and the family would be left with somehow trying to piece together their lives without someone they loved. Personally, I quickly recognized that in every one of those pictures, it was much like looking at someone you knew and/or saw regularly — your neighbor, your childhood friend, an ex-boyfrend or girlfriend, your coworker’s wife or kid, your cousin, a family friend you hadn’t seen in some time, a coworker. And although New York is a bustling city of 8.1 million people, there are countless moments in which it’s one of the smallest places in the wold, and as a result, you knew someone who survived the attacks or someone who lost someone. It’s a deeply visceral sensation of along the lines of “that could have been me, that could have been me, that could have been me/thank goodness, it wasn’t me, thank goodness, thank goodness.” 

Understandably, my mind turns to the families of the victims and survivors and the world at large today. In the past I’ve suggested wordy but thoughts on religion and our purpose here. I won’t do that today. I’ll just simply say this — cherish life. Cherish life always. This is all we know, and it may very well be all we have. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of the last year or so, you’ve likely come across a reference to Maurice “Mobetta” Brown, a highly acclaimed, Chicago, IL-born, Brooklyn-based classically trained trumpeter, who has been mentored by Wynton Marsalis and Ramsey Lewis, and has collaborated with an incredibly diverse array of renowned artists including Santigold, Ski Beatz, John Legend, Talib Kweli, Cee-Lo Green, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, Musiq Soulchild, Tedeschi Trucks Band (with whom he won a Grammy in 2012 for Best Blues Album), Wyclef Jean, Santana and a growing list of other equally impressive artists. And although he may be classically trained, as a solo artist and bandleader, Brown’s work draws from contemporary hip-hop, funk, neo-soul while nodding at jazz’s classical tradition — namely the work of Louis Armstong, as Brown will freely rhyme and sing during his compositions, essentially pushing the sound of contemporary jazz towards new directions without forgetting its origins.

The Mood is Brown’s latest album of original compositions and the album’s second and latest single, album title track “The Mood” is a swaggering composition that manages to draw from contemporary soul, smooth jazz, Miles Davis’ famous modal compositions — in particular, Kind of Blue, Davis’ jazz fusion period and hip-hop in a seamless and funky composition that allows enough room for each musician to strut, show their stuff and expand upon the composition’s smooth flowing melody. And if the one that that’s certain, Brown will cement himself as arguably one of contemporary jazz’s most exciting and ambitious composers and artists with an imitable sound and approach.

 

 

 

 

 

Throwback by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme/Some Thoughts on Jazz, John Coltrane, My Father and 9/11

Thoughts on Jazz, John Coltrane, my father and 9/11.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: RIP Prince

The fifth anniversary of my father’s death is tomorrow and as you can imagine, I had thought of him when I was sitting in a Starbucks on Hudson Street between Charlton Street and Vandam Street, […]

Throwback by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme

Since this site’s inception, it has been an annual tradition that I write something on John Coltrane‘s A Love Supreme, an album that is arguably not only one of the most beautiful albums ever written […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Interview: The Joy of Music Blogging: William Ruben Helms and His Devotion to a Lifestyle

In the five years that I’ve run The Joy of Violent Movement, I’ve conducted about 100 interviews, and as a result I’ve wound up growing quite used to the role of being an interviewer. But […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

As the co-founder of Monotonix, guitarist and composer Yonatan Gat was part of a band that was once hailed as being one of most intense rock bands in the world. But after five years of […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Kat Wright and the Indomitable Soul Band and Superhuman Happiness at Drom 1/17/15

Kat Wright and the indomitable Soul Band and Superhuman Happiness Drom January 17, 2015 A little over two weeks ago, i was at Drom to catch a night of funk and soul featuring the Burlington, […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Towards the end of my father’s very short life, our relationship had deteriorated to the point that we really didn’t have much of a relationship beyond the accident of biology. But there were a few […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

As the co-founder of Monotonix, guitarist (and composer) Yonatan Gat was part of a band that was once hailed as being one of most intense rock bands in the world. But after five years of recording and touring, […]